


Dance Like The Sea

by Twitchiest



Series: Apocalypse Girl [10]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Dark, F/F, Post-Apocalypse, Present Tense, confused puppy-dog character, moping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 09:06:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8199391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twitchiest/pseuds/Twitchiest





	

_**One**_  
  
Boss won't like this, but Bay doesn't much care.  
  
She's perched in a leafy tree high above a large camp, bag lashed to a brand behind her, Siti's crossbow on her back. She's far from Manor and the confused group of scouts camped well inside Manor's borders, far from friends and allies, watching Siti navigate a maze of tents with a stack of bowls.  
  
Bay can't understand why Siti would choose this place. She was happy in Manor. She had everything she wanted. Why turn away from that?  
  
Watching her sets an aching in her chest. Bay needs to understand.  
  
_**Two**_  
  
She only meant to go out for a while, when she left. She couldn't bear the aching of seeing Siti go. She hadn't entirely intended to follow the scout's trail so far, but days away from Manor stretched into two weeks. In the end, she kept doing it.  
  
It was warm enough to live off at the land, at any rate. Deer were harder to hunt alone, but rabbits weren't.  
  
To catch up, find the scouts in disarray and Siti just - not there -  
  
She'd lied to Hound's face and disappeared before he could find somewhere with a radio, to report.  
  
_**Three**_  
  
Siti doesn't like picking up for the men around her. Bay can see it, in the tightness of her shoulders. Siti hasn't smiled the entire time Bay's been watching. But it's protection. That's obvious, even if Bay doesn't understand a word of what they're saying. She works around the same two tents, the largest ones, where the leader and his white-sash accomplice stays. The leader cuffs men who stare at her too long.  
  
Bay wants to kiss Siti until every measure of her tightly-wound tenseness is gone. It doesn't suit her.  
  
Bay digs her fingers into tree bark and breathes.  
  
_**Four**_  
  
The camp is composed of men. A hundred, a little more. They have Siti's skin colour, and they've taken to the weather badly, wrapped up in layers of cloth. During a cold snap, even their guards spend most of the night by a fire.  
  
And Bay thought Siti's winter misery was bad.  
  
Winter. It's a long way off, but Siti spending it in tents -!  
  
It's not rational, this fear, but it's familiar, like the soft rush of warmth when she catches Siti moving her hands to speak to someone then stop, lips pressed together in irritation at not being understood.  
  
_**Five**_  
  
Something about the camp rubs her all wrong until she realises it, a couple days in. They're camped all wrong. Manor digs ditches around camps they're going to hold for more than a season, and builds look-outs in the trees out of ropes and bits of wood. These people have sent up tents in two circles, which might slow down an enemy but'll slow them down, too, all ropes and stakes everywhere to trip on, with the main fire right in the middle.  
  
And they put their pack-ponies on the outside, where anyone could cut the lines and steal them.  
  
_**Six**_  
  
Bay spends four days up a tree before the stillness drives her mad.  
  
It's not a bad tree. Old, gnarled, with twisting branches to hide her. It's not the ground, though, and she needs to hunt.  
  
On the fourth night she drops out of the tree and picks her way through the quiet forest. Rabbits prefer open spaces, but there are still some deer here, still and wary in the darkness. She has to crawl through trees to get a good shot, and as quiet as the bow is, the bolt's flight sets the herd running.  
  
Minus one doe, anyway.  
  
_**Seven**_  
  
Boss would call her a fool, and she'd deserve it. She took what she wanted, wrapping it in oilcloth. She ripped up the deer in ragged gouges to make it look like a wolf kill. She hunted away from the camp. But when she wakes up the next morning, the camp is packing up in a hurry.  
  
Of course, they have the ponies. Half a dozen of them, irritable pack animals, tethered in a line. Even the thought of a wolf would alarm them.  
  
Stupid, stupid, stupid.  
  
She cooks the meat in the remains of their fires before she follows.  
  
_**Eight**_  
  
Her shadow disappeared the day she first saw Siti.  
  
He'd haunted her all the way out to the cliff town, and had been following him around the town when a movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention. It hadn't been anything. A young woman. Bay followed her all the way to a shack in the shelter of larger houses, near a dammed spring, and watched her move around. Poked around the shack when she was away.  
  
Just someone else on the edge, struggling to survive.  
  
She hadn't even noticed her ghost-shadow was gone until a week later.  
  
_**Nine**_  
  
The southerner's next camp is on the edge of the wood, in a grassy river valley. This time they dig a ditch around it, but they don't make look-out points.  
  
Bay has height, but not much else. Stupid. She has to keep moving. The sun is forever shining in her eyes.  
  
Still, Siti seems to be trusted more, here. Or they're giving her more work. She goes away from the camp more often, usually down to the river. This one, unfamiliar, ran shallow, and was easily accessible.  
  
She has to get to Siti. She has to know. Has to ask.  
  
_**Ten**_  
  
Bay wouldn't even have bothered Siti if she hadn't seen her go up and down a sheer cliff. Whoever she was, she couldn't creep or hide as well as Boss or even Bay herself, but Bay hadn't seen the pathway in the rocks until she watched Siti use it. It wasn't much- until Bay tried it, she would have sworn only goats could manage it- but it was firm underfoot and mostly dry  
  
This person, she decided she wanted to know. The one who had the courage to climb a killing cliff every single day, just to catch some fish.  
  
_**Eleven**_  
  
The white-sash man starts talking to Siti more often. Or at her. Siti never writes or signs, only nods or shakes her head, and even at this distance Bay can see she stands with her feet apart, back straight, the firm obstinancy of a girl who got ten foot down a storm-torn cliff on trembling, weak legs before she let Bay throw her a rope. Who reached out first, lips softer than Bay ever thought they could be. Siti did what she wanted, always -  
  
Just like Darren did.  
  
Bay sits still, cold despite the sun shining between two wispy clouds.  
  
_**Twelve**_  
  
Who was she really here for? It wasn't safe. If they found her, armed, they'd kill her or worse. And Manor needed her. Boss had been right. She needed to be at home, amongst the people of Manor. The last time she'd felt pulled -  
  
She couldn't do it again. Not that. Not to Siti, who never harmed anyone, who never would -  
  
But she thought Siti liked Manor. That she'd stay, become part of it the same way Mace had. She was safe there, protected. Wasn't that enough?  
  
Why couldn't it be enough?  
  
Bay has to know what was going on.  
  
_**Thirteen**_  
  
Maybe, Bay thought, they were arguing about clothes.  
  
Today, the leader has joined the debate. He's holding more of the silky, draped fabric. Bay chews on a nut, considering the distant scene. Siti, standing there with her arms under the cape, probably folded, back to Bay and the woodland. The white-sash man and the leader demonstrating wildly with their hands. Then the leader catches at the cape and Siti lashes upwards, outwards, slapping him.  
  
The entire scene goes still.  
  
Not the cape, Bay thought. The scarf.  
  
Siti shook her head, pulls at her battered, murky-coloured, familiar scarf, and stalks away.  
  
_**Fourteen**_  
  
Siti'd said these weren't her people. Their beliefs were similar, but different enough to be alien. Maybe that stretched out to clothes, but why would clothes be part of anyone's beliefs? What did the outside matter to the inside? And why wasn't there a single woman in the camp, if they had Siti doing all sorts of work for them? Why did they have two leaders?  
  
Boss or One would have known, but Bay never asked them about religions before the End. It hadn't mattered to her, before. And whatever Siti believed, she hadn't seemed to follow it, in Manor.  
  
_**Fifteen**_  
  
The conversation doesn't end there. The leader follows, caught at the scarf -  
  
Bay doesn't think. She pulls the crossbow off her back and aims, waits, watching Siti panic, grabbing for it. The leader steps back. Siti takes it and runs, through the gap in the ditch, straight for the trees.  
  
The leader calls. Siti looka up and freezes, almost midstep, staring straight in Bay's direction. Siti sees her. She has to. She -  
  
Bay turns the crossbow back to the leader. All the better to cover her retreat.  
  
Then Siti wraps the scarf around her neck, nods, and turns back.  
  
_**Sixteen**_  
  
Why?  
  
They were willing to let her run. Even the leader hadn't followed, for all he called. She could have brought Siti home. What, in those near-constant arguments, could convince Siti to stay?  
  
To protect her? If she'd made it to the trees, Bay could sneak her away safely. These men didn't know how to move in a woodland, tramping around and making as much noise as they could. They never looked up. Even against a hundred men, Bay could run and never be found.  
  
Why is Siti even staying if she could always leave? What is she planning, in there?  
  
_**Seventeen**_  
  
The arguments about clothing seem to stop. And the man leer at her less. Some of them even try to be polite. Of their own will, or ordered, Bay can't tell. They stop giving her the obvious menial work. She starts cooking, or at least is trusted to stir and add ingredients to the great black cooking pot. Bay can't lip-read her own language, let alone anyone else's.  
  
Siti smiles when she did it. Like she wants to be there. Like they...  
  
Trust? She was trying to get them to trust her?  
  
Bay, lying flat on a wide branch, frowns.  
  
**_Eighteen_**  
  
Dedham.  
  
Bay hadn't realised how people outside of Manor treated the strange, before. Why would she? She was like them. Siti, silent, unable to speak, was unutterably strange to Dedham.  
  
She'd never realised that the people in the big house, deaf or blind or old, didn't exist out here. She'd never looked. Should've.  
  
They needed Dedham, so she didn't argue with it. But she kept her Siti close to her, kept her safe, and she argued them into deals that would benefit Manor far more than Dedham. There was no reason to be favourable to people who insulted Siti so.  
  
_**Nineteen**_  
  
A few days later, Bay is half-asleep when she catches sight of Siti walking to the forest with a kind of sack over her arm, a pair of men in tow.  
  
She slips out of the tree and shadows them.  
  
The men talk to each other, laughing loudly, peering through the undergrowth and sometimes pulling up entire plants, roots and all, tossing them into a pile near the sack. Their path takes them further away from Siti's wandering orbit around a nettle patch. Hidden in the shelter of a dead hollow tree, Bay centres herself and takes her chance.  
  
_**Twenty**_  
  
She only meant to pull Siti into the shelter and talk to her. But she catches Siti's arm and Siti whirls straight into her, bowling them both back into the dry, rotting wood. Clings and stays, face buried against Bay's shoulder.  
  
Bay curls her arms around her and clings right back.  
  
How long? Weeks. Months, maybe. She says, "Siti, why are you-"  
  
Siti raises her head and presses a finger against Bay's lips. She smiles, but it's sad.  
  
Footsteps. The men coming back. Siti sighs, leans up, presses her lips against Bay's - once, soft, light - and slips out of Bay's arms.  
  
_**Twenty One**_  
  
Monsters and wolves.  
  
Bay lays her head against her arms, flat on a long, wide branch, and listened to the southerner's camp.  
  
Darren was the monster, Bay the wolf. That was the story Boss had painted. But Siti reminds her, in the end, of Darren - or was this just how she loved? Mace she might let go of, though it hurt to lose someone after years of having them. But she hadn't let Siti go. She hadn't even considered it.  
  
Because she loved her more? Or because she was attracted to people like Darren?  
  
Which was Siti, monster or wolf?  
  
_**Twenty Two**_  
  
Bay wakes to midday heat, bird song, and an absense.  
  
The camp stands silent and still. Not empty - the ponies are there, the tents, even the low-burning fire. No one stirs.  
  
Trap. It had to be. They know she's here.  
  
But -  
  
Had the ponies been loaded with their panniers, last night?  
  
Bay takes her bag and dropped out of her tree.  
  
No one moves as she walked through the long grass, or into the camp. She dared a tent, and found still, pale, cold bodies.  
  
And Siti, coming out of a tent with a sack.  
  
They stare at each other.  
  
_**Twenty Three**_  
  
The plants. She gathered them for this. Siti gained the trust of the camp and poisoned them all.  
  
Bay takes a deep breath and Siti flinches back, dropping the sack and raising her hands. She flurries through signs too fast for Bay to read, and Bay says, "How can I help?"  
  
Siti stops. Blinks a few times, owlishly sweet. _Signs, I killed them._  
  
"It doesn't matter," Bay says. "You saved Manor from having to fight them." It's hard, but true. Boss would never let them stay unchallenged. "How can I help?"  
  
Siti bites her lip and points into the tent.  
  
_**Twenty Four**_  
  
Is this how Leander feels, when he looks at Boss?  
  
But Siti isn't Boss. She killed them, but she can't look at them, avoiding even a glance into the tents as she and Bay carries the camp's stock to the ponies. And Bay isn't Leander, isn't Siti's keeper of secrets. Boss lets him reach out to her. Siti throws herself into Bay's hug, when they're done stealing everything these people owned.  
  
There was a time when Bay'd be the same, about the tents. But they threatened Manor's people, and therefore Manor itself. She holds Siti and feels nothing about them.  
  
_**Twenty Five**_  
  
Through the afternoon, Siti makes paint of dyes and water and shows Bay how to paint what she calls curses onto all the tents. They're easy to do, made of sharp lines laid over each other. Only when every side of every tent has one is her Siti satisfied.  
  
Siti tells her it'll ward away others.  
  
They set off in the evening, tugging obedient ponies behind them. Siti falls asleep on top of one and Bay doesn't wake her all night, no matter how tired she is. This is right. They're right.  
  
_Maybe wolves just need a pack,_ she thinks.


End file.
